Chevron Corp., owner of six U.S. oil refineries with the capacity to process more than 1.2 billion barrels per day, is one of the few U.S. oil companies still committed to having a direct-operated retail network. The company operates 330 ExtraMile convenience stores, and another 420 or so sites are operated by franchisees, all in the states of Washington, Oregon and California.
The company remains committed to the c-stores and continues to upgrade the ExtraMile concept. The core focus is packaged beverages, coffee, tobacco and foodservice, and the company strives for a consistent customer experience, regardless if the store is company-operated or a franchise.
The company plans to continue to add franchises, growing to 800-1,000 franchise sites and adding 30 to 50 per year.
| Headquarters: | San Ramon, California |
|---|---|
| No. of Stores: | 750 |
| Average Store Size: | 1,000-2,500 sq. ft. |
| Rank: | 12 |
| Rank Last Year: | 12 |
| States of Operation: | California, Florida, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington |
| Website: | http://www.chevron.com |
“The starting point for everything around the [in-store] offer is proven demand already for a particular product or concept,” says Paul Casadont, merchandising manager for the Americas (seen here, on the right, with Ian Noble, manager of district sales for the franchise, left, and Adrian Bendeck, general manager, center).
ExtraMile’s Extra Good To Go program offers a range of hot food from sausage and brats to taquitos and tamales. It also has a few fresh sandwich offers on the launching pad that are more targeted toward specific day-parts. “It’s less one size fits all, more targeted to specific shopping patterns in each location,” said Casadont.
Chevron has focused over the past several years on providing a consistent, competitive fountain and frozen-beverage offer, but it hasn’t yet reached the level of a true destination category, said Casadont. While the offer is competitive from the standpoint of pricing, cup size and variety, there is room for more customization. Chevron will be exploring new fountain technology in the coming months to help meet this preference.
Two years since the rollout of its Seattle’s Best Coffee (SBC) branded offer, the ExtraMile team is happy with the results, but believes there is even greater opportunity beyond traditional drip coffee. “Drip coffee is not growing at a very quick rate at all,” said Casadont, saying the real growth is in specialty coffees such as lattes and mochas.
While tobacco is a core focus of ExtraMile, it is no longer limited to cigarettes and OTP. The ExtraMile merchandising team is moving e-cigarettes into its tobacco backbar and testing vaping products at 10 sites. ExtraMile is also getting more location-specific on pricing tobacco, keeping it aligned with area competition.
Chevron is building its ExtraMile franchisee network in the main metropolitan areas of its three-state footprint: Seattle and Puget Sound in Washington, Vancouver and Portland in Oregon, and San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and San Diego in California. The strategy is to build onto those metropolitan areas, creating the right density from a marketing footprint point of view.